Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Snow and freezing rain shut campus

The university is closed today because of a winter storm that's
making life miserable from Oklahoma to Québec --
"major-league stuff", as the Globe and Mail puts it
on today's
front page.

With snow blowing hard out of the east yesterday afternoon, people went
home guessing that today might be a snow day. The official word came
about 6 a.m., when the Waterloo Region District School Board announced
that all its schools would be closed.
By longstanding
arrangement, UW closes when the schools close, and stays open when
they're open.

Overnight news

The closing means classes are cancelled, and staff members don't have to
come to work, except a few in "essential services" such as policing and
maintenance. Libraries, offices and stores will be closed, and so will
a host of services and spinoffs, from day care centres to the optometry clinic.

Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga College are also closed, and so
are schools and many other institutions from here eastward.
McMaster University is closed, but Guelph, Western and the U of Toronto
are all open.

There wasn't actually that much snow overnight, but the wind kept blowing
it into drifts, and freezing rain hit in the early morning. Another
load of snow is expected to land on Waterloo Region later today.
Local roads are
slippery this morning, with a number of accidents including a messy one
at University Avenue and the Conestoga Parkway, and another on
Bearinger Road at the edge of the north campus.

The grounds crew was working most of the night, and UW Police
told me about 8:30 this morning that the ring road was clear and most
of the parking lots "fairly well cleaned up".

I liked the comments that turned up on 'uwstudent.org' early today when it
announced the snow closing. "Yes!" wrote one student succinctly. And
another: "Isn't it funny that we all pray for a cancellation of a service
that we pay for where we don't get any refund."

Sarah Stephens (right) entered her second work term at
University
Health Network during a time of turbulence; only two months
into its fiscal year, one of her new departments, Transcription
Services, was headed towards being significantly over budget.

At UHN, the Transcription Services department is responsible for
converting physicians' notes into electronic records at each of the
Toronto General, Toronto Western, and Princess Margaret Hospitals. With
the hospitals seeing more patients, the volume of notes being dictated
into the central dictation system was skyrocketing, pushing the cost of
transcribing all these notes to over $2 million per year.

This is where Sarah came in. As a Project
Analyst, the 3B math and business major was charged with finding out
exactly what was happening in Transcription Services and developing an
overall strategy for bringing the department's costs back within
budget.

To increase the efficiency of note transcription, Sarah investigated
scenarios involving voice recognition software, electronic note
automation, and expanding the accessibility of the current note
capturing system. She also did a cost-benefit analysis, assessed how
implementing her suggestions would impact UHN, and - when all was said
and done - produced a report proposing savings in upwards of $1.2
million.

Greg Lewis, Project Manager in Health Records Projects, says
that as a complete analysis of the volume of activity in Transcription
Services, Sarah's report was "actually more than we'd expected." Lewis
was particularly impressed by Sarah's ability to produce results with
very little supervision. "She really took her work and ran with it and
made a lot of progress in a very short period of time," he says. "She
was completely independent."

For her part, Sarah appreciated being given as much responsibility as
a full-time employee. She describes her contribution to the network as
"transferring information into knowledge," adding that UHN, like many
large organizations, has a lot of information that may not be stored in
a form that is meaningful to the company's decision makers. "Through my
report," she says, "I was able to provide them with knowledge about
their internal operations."

Working at UHN made Sarah feel like she was making a difference, a
sentiment that is supported by her manager, Greg Lewis. "She's
definitely, in terms of her contribution, made an impact," he says.
"We've moved forward with many of her recommendations and we'll continue
to move forward with many more of them."

Jobs, Norwegians, and a priest

Co-op employment:
A total of 3,899 co-op students -- which looks to me like a record
-- had jobs for this term when it began, according to a chart sent over
by the co-op and career services department. However, there were 733
students who should have had jobs and didn't, as of
January 7, which works out to an
84.18 per cent employment rate. (This term a year ago, the rate was 88.40
per cent, with 3,840 students holding jobs and 504 still looking.)
Most of the unemployed students were in engineering and math -- 309
and 246 respectively; or, looking at it another way, they were in first
and second year, 408 and 277 respectively. Placement in year 1 engineering,
which would mean students with just four months of university experience,
was about 71 per cent: 598 students in jobs, 240 unemployed. More jobs
do come along during the early weeks of a term, and there will be final
employment figures some time next month.

Off to Norway:
A couple of people from Needles Hall are escaping the snow this week in,
of all places, Norway. (Weather yesterday in Oslo: partly
cloudy, minus-1 Celsius.) Virginia McLellan of the undergraduate
recruitment office reports that she and Gail Cuthbert Brand, associate
vice-president (academic), are off to "build
awareness of the University of Waterloo and the excellent
programs that we have to offer Norwegian students. While in Norway Gail
and I will be participating in 2 university fairs, visiting 5 of top high
schools in Oslo, and meeting with 3 of the top universities in Norway --
University of Bergen, University of Oslo, and the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology in Trondheim.
Currently, UW has an exchange agreement in place at the University of Bergen,
and Gail and I will be continuing discussions with the University of Oslo
during our visit. Gail will also be visiting the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology in Trondheim to discuss possible collaborations
between our two institutions.
This is the third year that UW has participated in education fairs and high
school outreach in Norway. Norway provides UW with an excellent
opportunity to attract high-quality students who have strong English
language skills, and may be more sympathetic to our cold Canadian winters!
Continuing to promote UW and increase our profile amongst high school and
university students in Norway will hopefully show a positive increase in
the number of Norwegian students applying to our programs."

Priest remembered:
Renison College has announced that it's creating a student award
in memory of Rev. Florence Li Tim-Oi, whose name is already honoured at
UW's Anglican college. Li was the first female priest anywhere in the
world -- originally ordained in emergency conditions in Hong Kong in
1944, re-ordained in Canada in 1984. A service commemorating the 60th
anniversary of her ordination will be held at Renison tomorrow at 3 p.m.,
with Rt. Rev. Ann Tottenham, a suffragan bishop of the Toronto diocese,
officiating, and the choir of the Church of the Holy Saviour singing.
The new award has been established by Li's sister, Rita K. Lee Chui, and
her husband. "This award," says a note from Renison, "will
be granted to a
student graduating from the Social Development Studies plan with
high academic achievement who has been admitted into the Bachelor of
Social Work program. Candidates must have a record of community
service, be involved with a faith community, and demonstrate financial
need. Preference will be given to candidates who have shown an interest in
working with the elderly. The recipient of this award will be known as the
Florence Li Tim-Oi Scholar." The Li Tim-Oi name is also going to be
attached to an archive and rare book facility that will be part of
Renison's planned Academic Centre; construction there starts next year.